Abby Zimet: Optuse Sexual Predator Approved

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In honor of Friendship Month and his stupendous speech at the UN, wherein he raved, bloviated and browbeat world leaders that their countries are “going to hell” but he’s “really good at this stuff,” some patriots have erected a new statue in D.C. of Trump and his “closest friend” Jeffrey Epstein happily twirling and sharing “another wonderful secret.” Residents praised the artwork as “glorious,” “Amazeballs” and a “sliver of hope,” arguing, “This is why we have to protect the arts.”

“Angry Old Man Yells At U.N” was a fitting headline for the mad king’s appearance at their annual General Assembly in New York City, where, one account dutifully reported, “his total ignorance of world events was on full display.” Other reviews: shambolic, bizarre, embarrassing, unhinged, “ranting, raving, rambling,” and “one of the most embarrassing speeches of his presidency,” which says a lot. Some of the delirium, punctuated by Adderall sniffs, might have been due to a malfunctioning teleprompter (also brain), which he repeatedly carped about: “All I got from the UN was an escalator (that) stopped in the middle and a teleprompter that didn’t work. Thank you very much.” Later, it turned out the White House was in charge of that. So nu?

Wildly winging it for almost an hour, over three times his allotted time, he then launched into his usual flood of lies about “the renewal of American strength around the world.” “Grocery prices are down,” he declared. “Inflation has been defeated.” NOT. “More than $17 trillion is being invested in the United States – it’s pouring in from all parts of the world.” Ditto. “In a period of seven months, I have ended seven unendable wars,” he claimed, adding one to the usual fiction and, ever gracious, whining he had to do it all by himself: “I never even received a phone call from the UN.” Never a fan of the multilateralism the UN represents -in his first few days he pulled the US out of multiple international organizations – he then lit into the august body.

Boasting about his own “bold action” to illegally terrorize, arrest and deport large numbers of innocent brown people, he blasted immigration in Europe as part of a “globalist migration agenda” by unnamed perfidious players. “Your countries are going to hell,” he yammered. “It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders…I can tell you, I’m really good at this stuff.” (Cue facepalm seen around the world.) In case he hadn’t waxed racist enough, he tossed an incendiary slur at London’s (Muslim) mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan, “a terrible, terrible mayor…Now they want to go to sharia law.” (Aghast groans added to facepalm.) Fox News said he “unfurled raw truth.” The rest of the world said his “erratic,” “reckless” claptrap was “hard to distinguish from reality TV.” 

Finally, knowingly – his uncle taught at MIT – he dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” argued “all the predictions were wrong” except if anything they were overly optimistic, and trashed windmills, his confounding, bird-and-whale-killing nemesis, as “so pathetic and so bad.” “The United States is now thriving like never before,” he prattled. “We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables. They are a joke. They don’t work. The wind doesn’t blow.” Magically, he then bundled up the failures of windmills and diplomacy to highlight his own stable genius: “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I’m really good at predicting things…I’ve been right about everything.”

It was to honor all those remarkable achievements – and Friendship Month, begun by The Grand United Order of Oddfellows Friendly Society (GUOOFS), founded in 1730s England to give “everyone 30 exciting days (to) celebrate everything that is amazing about Friendship!” – that the new art installation appeared Tuesday on the National Mall. The 12-foot, faux-bronze statues of a giddy Trump and Epstein prancing and holding hands is by The Secret Handshake; their earlier creations include a “Dictator Approved” giant thumbs-up crushing Lady Liberty’s crown, and turds honoring the Jan. 6 “brave men and women who broke into the U.S. Capitol (to) loot, urinate and defecate throughout these hallowed halls in order to overturn an election.”

The new work, said a spokesperson for the anonymous group, was born of “the widespread, bipartisan interest” in Epstein and their wish to put their friendship “on full display” in tribute to Friendship Month, even though nobody’s heard of it. “We wanted to celebrate what is presumably, at least publicly, Donald Trump’s only true friend,” said their representative. “Trump has had many business associates, but very few people have gone on the record as being his actual ‘friend.’ Jeffrey Epstein, who is the rare exception, stated that he was the President’s ‘closest friend.‘” Thus does one of three plaques accompanying the statues read, “We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend’ Jeffrey Epstein.”

Another plaque quotes Trump’s 50th birthday message, shaped like a nude female body, to Epstein. It reads, in part, “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,” followed by the singular Trump signature. Trump, of course, had called Epstein “a terrific guy” who was “a lot of fun to be with,” a sentiment others have widely interpreted as, “We are definitely both pedophiles who are friends and do pedophile things together.” “These two people had an affinity for each other,” noted the group’s rep, “and they also seemingly had an affinity for abusing women.” On the “uproar” over the release of the Epstein files: “We have nothing to do with that. The information about their bond (says) a lot.”

There were critics of the work, of course; there always are. A White House spokesperson denounced it with, “Liberals are free to waste their money however they see fit – but it’s not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep.” Another lie: he kicked him out for having “stolen” one of the young women working in Trump’s spa, doing God knows what tasks. But The Secret Handshake isn’t quibbling; they even said they’d “be happy” to donate the art to Trump’s new $200 million. ballroom. Other critics nitpicked: Trump’s statue isn’t fat enough, his hands should be smaller, his tie should be longer, no way he can stand on one foot, why do both men still have their pants on?

Mostly, onlookers and passersby loved it. They called it “fantastic,” “hilarious,” “beautiful,” “highly appropriate,” “Art History in the making,” “By far the most realistic depiction of our President that I’ve seen.” They said, “Thank you project mayhem” and, “This is true patriotism.” They fake-mourned, “Unfortunately, we cannot take this statue down. That would be erasing our history and heritage.” They proposed making mass small duplicates of the art work, for fundraising or Christmas ornaments. Many wondered who’d made it; one sage responded, “Nobody. It’s part of the universe manifesting truth.” A patriot crooned, “Sometimes I love this country so damn much.” “Protect the arts,” many urged. And, “This art is the prettiest art of all the art.” 

First published in Common Dreams. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely. 

Abby Zimet has written CD’s Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.